November 11, also known as Singles Day, is the most delightful day of the year for the shopping enthusiasts in China as all the e-commerce giants offer heavy discounts on their products. This year, the online shopping frenzy once again propelled Alibaba’s overall sales to a whopping US$30.8 billion, shattering the previous year’s record of US$25.5 billion. A mind-boggling 1.35 billion orders – 25.12 percent more than last year – were placed by the shopping fanatics of China. In order to better understand the exponential growth of the e-commerce market in China, let’s dive deeper and take a closer look into its history. The development of e-commerce in China mainly started from 1996 to 2000, when some progressive entrepreneurs realized that the traditional business models can be amalgamated with the internet to foster new business opportunities. In 1995, Jack Ma, one of the pioneers of China’s e-commerce, founded “China Yellow Page,” which was the first internet web page creation service provider. In 1999, many B2C websites like Ctrip, Dangdang, 8848.com as well as other governmental, private and educational websites were officially launched. However, the worldwide dot-com collapse in 2000 eventuated into the closure of many B2C businesses including 8848. After this debacle, the e-commerce sector gradually stabilized and eventually moved towards its accelerated stage. In 2002, the U.S. C2C e-commerce […]